Choreographer Dayna Hanson, formerly of the seminal Seattle dance-theatre company 33 Fainting Spells, debuts a new evening-length work, Gloria’s Cause,  starting Dec. 2 at On the Boards. Culturebot covered the work-in-progress showing at the TBA Festival in Portland this last September; read about it here.

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Oliver Butler is best known for his work with The Debate Society with whom he has developed 6 plays over the last 6 years. He is currently working with The Production Company on the World Premiere of Goodbye New York Goodbye Heart, opening on December 2 at Here, written by acclaimed Australian playwright Lally Katz.

Name: Oliver Butler
Title/Occupation: Director

1. Where did you grow up and how did you end up where you are now?

I was born in Washington D.C. My parents were actors, and I think that my father was in a play in D.C. and my mom was there visiting when she went into labor. My Dad said that my Mother was acting in Romeo and Juliet when I was conceived, and he was acting in Hamlet when I was born. But I think that might be a made-up story. I am definitely the son of actors- there are a lot of stories surrounding my creation and childhood and I have trouble knowing whether they are fact or poetic exaggeration. My mother, Pamela Payton-Wright, is still a working actor, a great theater artist who I had the chance to work with on Cape Disappointment.

I grew up in Connectucut, went to a private day school and boarding school (on scholarship), but graduated from a public high school in East Lyme Connecticut. I tried to study french and political science in college, but somehow I ended up in theater. After a summer at Williamstown as an acting apprentice, I started directing back in college. I can’t say that my mother especially wanted me to become a theater artist, knowing how hard the life is. But both my parents have supported the choice, and are excited by the work I am doing.

For the last 7 years I have been making plays with my theater company The Debate Society. Hannah Bos and Paul Thureen are the playwrights, and in working with them on 6 new plays I have had the chance to figure out everything that I currently know about what makes a play good and how to tell a story. Working with them has been like my own private graduate program in theatrical storytelling, and most of what people know of my work is connected to The Debate Society. I am the artist I am today because of this ongoing collaboration.

2. Which performance, song, play, movie, painting or other work of art had the biggest influence on you and why?

About 4 years ago I took a job with Elevator Repair Service, driving their set for Gatz from Orange, Connecticut to Minneapolis in a 24 foot truck. I took the job because it felt like a way to have a paid road trip. Driving a a big-rig half-way across the country also sounded romantic, and it was. At the end of the trip though, I got to see the 7 hour marathon of Gatz and it blew my mind. I guess I am really interested in simple presentations that expand in their complexity over time. That production really creeps up on you, and you get a unique experience in that at the 6th hour of the show, in addition to the brilliant storytelling (Thanks ERS) and the brilliant writing (Thanks Fitzgerald) there is a shared energy in the audience – a feeling that you are actually going to achieve this feat together.

I think about that play a lot, and got to bring my girlfriend to see the latest at The Public.

3. What skill, talent or attribute do you most wish you had and why?

I wish I spoke Spanish. I am working on it. Mostly I try to speak spanish with some of my co-workers at the shop (see next question) to get better. But mostly that involves me ordering coffee or talking about pop singers. My greatest dream in life is to travel, and I have always felt that actually knowing another language intimately is sort of like travelling to the place. Really I’d like to be fluent in like 5 languages, but I am going to focus on just one for while.

4. What do you do to make a living? Describe a normal day.

I am a carpenter who builds rooftop gardens with a company called City Beautiful Carpentry. I get to spend most of my days on beautiful rooftops all over New York City. My best friend also works for the company, so most days I get to spend with him. But the work is hard. Here is my normal day lately.

6AM: Wake up, make coffee, go to work. (In case of today – finish this interview)
7AM: Arrive on rooftop in Soho, do carpentry things
11AM: Take coffee break. Make a phone call to a designer or Lally (playwright for Goodbye New York)
1PM: Eat Hot and Sour soup, or local sandwich for lunch.
4PM: Break for day
5PM: Rush home, shower, change for rehearsal.
6PM: Rehearsal for play in Manhattan
10PM: Designer meet
11PM: Home with girlfriend. Have a beer. Watch ½ of 30 Rock, Fall asleep.
Repeat.

5. Have you ever had to make a choice between work and art? What did you choose, why, and what was the outcome?

I feel like I am making this choice every single day. All day long I am doing my day job to keep the art afloat, or doing a play in spite of it making me poor. My whole life is a compromise between life and art.

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Last Thursday we went on a whim to go check out FIVE ‘TIL (solo) by Edwin Lee Gibson at Dixon Place. Gibson wrote and performed the show, it was directed by Daphne Richards with musical direction by Michael Pemberton.

It was conventional solo show fare – it is the story of one Dante Wallace, a career criminal who is accused of molesting and killing his girlfriend’s daughter, a young child. He is waiting on death row in Huntsville Texas State Prison and the show is stream-of-consciousness imagining of the doomed man’s thoughts in his final five minutes. In a mix of song, spoken word and monologue, Gibson recounts Wallace’s side of the story – he proclaims his innocence – as he meditates on the life that brought him to this terrible moment.

Gibson is a talented and engaging performer – he received an OBIE Award for Outstanding Performance for his portrayal of Oedipus in Will Power’s The Seven – and he makes a compassionate hero out of a relatively unlikeable character. The show moves fluidly from song to spoken word to monologue and Gibson convincingly portrays a host of different characters in the service of the story. Gibson’s voice is warm and raspy, his face and eyes are expressive and melancholy, overall it is his charisma as a performer that gives the show its strength.

Enjoyable though it is, for a show taking on such a significant subject, it feels inconsequential. The stakes couldn’t be higher – a man’s life is on the line – but the show doesn’t resonate on that level. It goes by like a glossy overview of some of the topics related to the death penalty without really digging in or complicating matters. FIVE ‘TIL (solo) was originally presented by Dixon Place and I had to wonder why they were bringing it back now. Topically, it didn’t feel like we were covering much new ground and formally it was also very familiar and well-trodden territory. A perfectly solid solo work ably performed, but not much new here.

Which is not the case with Samuael Topiary’s Landscape With The Fall of Icarus at Abrons Arts Center, which we saw on Saturday night. We had seen a workshop version of the show at Dixon Place a few months ago and since then the creative team had worked a lot on it. The new version of the show was shorter, more focused and more composed. The video design, by Topiary and Peter Kerlin, was well-integrated into the overall performance as was musical accompaniment by C. Ryder Cooley and Jon Moniaci. The whimsical costumes by Jocelyn Davis added a surreal, playful element to the proceedings and the set, simple as it was, was very effective.

Basically the show is a set of meditations on New York, capitalism, commerce and creativity. It starts with Topiary entering as the painter Brueghel and telling the story of his painting “Landscape With The Fall of Icarus” – which lays the conceptual groundwork for the rest of the piece. From there we move into a narrative by Henry Hudson as he explores the river that now bears his name, an interlude with the Minotaur, a colorful re-imagining of Amelia Earhart and concludes with a speech by David Rockefeller and the construction of the World Trade Center. Interspersed into the stories are songs, videos and lectures that tie together the various strands of thought being explored.

The subject matter – particularly the correlation between the banking crisis of Brueghel’s time and our own – seemed particularly relevant and with the 10th anniversary of 9/11 coming up, it seems like an appropriate time to remember the origins of the Twin Towers.

Topiary is an engaging performer and of nimble imagination. She juxtaposes these characters with video imagery and sound to create a dense multimedia web where art, architecture, mythology and Mammon converge. As opposed to the early work in progress version, this version turned down the didacticism and was alternately humorous and insightful. Still a bit heavy-handed at times, the show had a much clearer arc this time around. The connections between the staged situations/characters revealed themselves through context without being re-explained through lengthy sidebars.

I thought it was a neat trick that the show opens in a very confined space – Topiary enters from the house and plays the first part in front of a movable wall with a projection of the Brueghel painting – and slowly with each sequence the set is stripped away until the final monologue is performed in front of a wall-sized projection of the World Trade Center. It was evidence of the thoughtfulness that Topiary and her director, Miguel Gutierrez, put into every component of the show. That our sense of perspective would shift in our engagement with the event of performance, just as our sense of perspective shifts in apprehension of Brueghel’s painting, is a clever aesthetic grace note to a dense, complicated and thoughtful show.

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Pass the Blutwurst, Bitte by John Kelly from culturehub on Vimeo.

Pass the Blutwurst, Bitte, John Kelly’s masterpiece of dance, film and music, dramatically depicts the life of Viennese expressionist, Egon Schiele (1890 – 1918), whose erotic paintings once got him jailed for pornography.
Originally presented at Dance Theater Workshop in 1986, it received an OBIE Award in 1987. An expanded and revised version was presented at La MaMa in 1995, and was listed by the New York Times as one of its Ten Best Events of the Year and toured extensively both nationally and internationally (Italy, France, Germany). Now, after more than a dozen years, John Kelly is bringing the piece back to La MaMa, performing it for the final time.
In addition to the stage production, there will be a concurrent exhibit of John Kelly’s visual artwork at La MaMa’s La Galleria.
John is a recipient of two 2010 NEA American Masterpieces Awards – one for Pass the Blutwurst, Bitte.

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Choreographer Julian Barnett’s Super Natural is at DNA thru Sunday afternoon.  Jeremy mentions the show in this week’s roundup.

You’ve mentioned that a lot of artists seem stuck or tied to reliving Rainier’s No Manifesto; that many of today’s American artists are struggling with a rejection of form. How does this relate to your work right now? I think my work heavily utilizes form and I’m not resistant to using the body. I think I have a deeper understanding of how to use the body now, than I did before. I like movement and exploring ways to see how movement can come about.  It can come from outside of the body – historical or personal – but it always starts from that seed in the body.  I see my work in phases. I feel like the way that I’ve used movement in the past is different than how I’m using it now. It’s broadened to a really exciting place. I see movement in everything, in stillness. I’m not afraid of, rather, I enjoy the mechanics of the body. I enjoy seeing how the mechanics of momentum can be dissected into 32 categories. How that movement can resonate spatial and conceptual relationships.

How did this artistic broadening happening? It most clearly shifted in the past four years.  One clear thing: I started noticing what I didn’t like. There’s something about a familiarity and there was something that was redundant in the works of others and my own and my own familiar, habitual impulses. It was historical in my own doing and watching.  Really, when I began to work with Wally Cardona, he introduced a landscape of movement philosophies and use of the object that opened up a window into how ‘dance’ can be something from nothing. Dance isn’t something that isn’t familiar to a specific form. It is my deviation from specific forms of my training – hiphop, breaking, ballet, etc.  I started questioning: why do I feel like I want to move this way.  I took that and found a desire to seek a re-definition and  a new definition for my own authentic movement. That made me push a little harder. It takes time to challenge yourself out of the familiar. That effort does cultivate, new ways of moving. There’s this whole, exciting relationship to seeing how I can use the body, not being afraid to use movement. I used to feel alone or not appreciated in wanting to dance.  I mean, the context of my 20s was really vast. It was wide open. It was a time for gaining experience and learning how to perform and taking on these jobs and figuring out a way through this city. I wanted to make work and saw all this work around me and questioned how I fit in. My context was this weird thing where I needed to know which context I was going to be in. I was exploring which one I wanted to be in. It wasn’t until about 4 years ago when I relinquished that context.  It’s interesting, there was this moment when I was 26-years old, at Hubbard St. trying to chose for dancers for my work. I’m looking at headshots and watching barre and they were all amazing dancers, but I remembered thinking that none of them could do what I do. That was a realization when I understood that I naturally gravitate towards personal movement and it takes explaining and not just technique.

How does that effect who you work with now? It’s a long process finding dancers. I do make my work in relationship to where it’s going to be presented and how that’s going to be seen. In Super Natural we had a long audition process/open rehearsal where I found Phina.  We did structured improvisations for 4 hours a day.  I’d ask questions like: How do you divert momentum? How do you stay connected? How do you do this and add performance in relation to something? How do you perform a transcendent solo? How do you perform a solo about love in an unfamiliar way?  I’m looking for people who can make decisions and who share an understanding of the physical, spatial relationships. I’m looking for a specific kind of intelligence that looks for everything.  I want to performer to be able to place those elements in the moment themselves. I’m still figuring that out. I love the people I’m working with right now.  When I go back in January to Holland. I have to make a work on the students there.  I had to figure out: How do I make this relevant to them? Do I hold an audition? Do I have a workshop? Do I choose the students I notice? So, I saw several shows and invited the students who stood out to come to a physical playdate.

So, you’re in a Master’s Program in Dance Unlimited, ArtEZ’s Choreography Program in Arnhem. How did you choose this and get there? I wanted a period of time to stay tethered to NYC, but branch into Europe. The Amsterdam program was interesting and I’d talked with Jeanine (Durning) about it. It had an isolating structure to it. Two people. Independent practice. Rotterdam seemed more technical and I started building a correspondence with Joao (da Silva) at DU. There is a great NY-related history.  In the library, there are great videos of Ishmael Houston-Jones, Meg Stuart, and Yoshiko Chuma.  I applied and got a great feeling. The audition was really a two-day interview. The first day we were surprised and told that we had to teach a class to the 10 other auditionees – 20 minutes, on the spot. It gauged how we communicate? We had one group improvisation and then we got dressed and were interviewed.  After that, there was a individual interview with the entire panel when we talked about ourselves and our work. There was this one moment that triggered a noticeable shift in the room when I talked about how I wanted to come because I wanted to fail. Everyone shifted their butts and cleared their throats and wanted to know “What do you mean by fail?” I  said I wanted to have the luxury to go where I don’t know where I am going.  “What would you need to fail? What are the elements that you need to fail?” I wasn’t sure. I knew I wanted to go beyond my comfort and they kept trying to get more about how I viewed failure. I didn’t know because I think it is something that you aren’t regularly confronted with. I think it is something that you become aware of. I couldn’t anticipate my failure landing points. I could only aim for not-failing and if I did, to have the space to recognize it. Then I got a scholarship and was able to go.

How is graduate study impacting you? It has been fantastic. There’s time to read, write, talk and then apply it into practice, into making and exploring. It’s changing me quite dramatically. It’s changing how I write and through practice becoming a better writer. It’s also opened up a new way that I experience writing. I’m more cognizant of the potential that writing has versus  my previous view of it as a burden. It’s fascinating on from a cultural perspective.  I’ve been asked why did I need to leave New York.  But, I think I’m staying tethered and I have this sensation that I’m bringing it with me. It’s right alongside me there.

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Yin Yue, who won the first night of the NYC 2010 A.W.A.R.D. Show. Congrats! Photo by Quinn Batson.

Wow. What a week already! Up tonight–though none of your trusty Culturebot contributors look to be going–is night number two of the NYC edition of The A.W.A.R.D. Show at the Joyce Soho. I’m sure you all know how it works, and have a million different opinions about it ranging from ambivalence to outright hostility, with the odd full-blown supporter thrown in. So feel free to comment away. Last night, Yin Yue won, which means she goes onto the final round Saturday, against whoever wins the audience vote tonight and tomorrow. At the very least, it’s a very cool opportunity for emerging artists to showcase their work.

Otherwise, tonight is the opening night of the Julian Barnett Project‘s Super Natural at DNA. Barnett, born in Japan and raised in SoCal on a diet of hiphop and breakdancing, is exploring the potential for transcendence through movement in his new piece. And yes, I know that’s one of those ridiculous PR notes sort of statements (like dance having “an intense physicality,” as opposed to, you know, the other kind of not-particularly physical dance), but as a starting point if offers a lot of rich opportunities, and in fact is a rather risky concept to tackle. Dance is an art form which requires the artist transform his or her own body into an instrument capable of actions and movements the average body is not. While exploring movement itself is almost self-absorbed in its inward gaze, when successful, the results can be astounding, as dancers achieve a deeply powerful form of communication completely stripped free of referents. Or it can be awful. Hence the risk, but I think Barnett may be able to pull it off.

As for the rest of the crew, Alyssa is heading to Kneehigh Theatre‘s The Red Shoes at St. Ann’s Warehouse this weekend, and I’ll be catching it come Tuesday. Mike Shepherd founded Kneehigh nearly 30 years ago when he moved to Cornwall, England to establish his company, which remains true to its country roots, the work-a-day humdrum of farm life and the complex sense of community and place which exist in smaller communities informs Kneehigh’s aesthetic and work ethic, which promises to be on display in their rich reimagining of the Hans Christian Anderson fairy tale.

Maura Donohue, for her part, is interviewing both Barnett and Lar Lubovitch, whose Legend is debuting at the BAC tonight, along with revivals of North Star and Coltrane’s Favorite Things. Aaron Mattocks saw (and interviewed) Jonah Bokaer, whose Anchises is playing at Abrons Arts Center, and aside from hitting a couple other shows, this evening Mattocks’ own visual art work will be opening as part of a group show at Pratt Manhattan Gallery, called Blind Dates Show.

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Monday night we saw Eliza Clark’s Edgewise, produced by the PlayCo. and Page 73 at Walkerspace and Wednesday night took us to BAM for The Marriage of Maria Braun, quite the study in contrasts.

The Marriage of Maria Braun is German director Thomas Ostermeier’s adaptation of the Rainer Werner Fassbinder film. I haven’t seen the Fassbinder film but Ostermeier’s production is a densely layered exploration of one desperate woman’s fight for survival in post-WWII Germany. Simultaneously an exploration of the post-war landscape and a gripping drama of cunning, sex and manipulation, Ostermeier weaves together a story that resonates emotionally and as allegory.

The show opens with a slide show of Hitler-era images and with two male cast members reading “Love Letters to Hitler” – it is jarring and disturbing, while at the same time laying the psychological groundwork for the piece. Maria and her husband Herrmann are married as bombs fall on the city, and he is sent to Russia. When Maria hears that her husband is dead she takes up with an American G.I. she meets as a hostess in a bar. Herrmann is not dead and returns to find Maria in flagrante delicto with her new, black, paramour. In a fit of passion Maria kills the G.I. and Herrmann confesses to the murder to spare her jail time. While Herrmann is serving his time, Maria finds work with a French textile manufacturer – she is working to make money to buy a house and build a home for when Herrmann returns. But soon she has started an affair with the much-older textile manufacturer. The textile manufacturer finds out about her husband and makes a deal with Herrmann that upon his release from prison he will go away until the textile manufacturer dies. In compensation, the textile manufacturer leaves half of his estate to Herrmann and half to Maria – who now must live with the knowledge the Herrmann, essentially, sold her love.

It is a bleak, fraught story which captures the desperation of a country destroyed by war and the complications of returning to normalcy after the Nazi era. Brigitte Hobmeier is radiant as Maria and the ensemble of men (Jean-Pierre Cornu, Hans Kremer, Bernd Moss and Steven Scharf) who play all the other parts (male and female) are agile actors, bringing a diverse cast of characters to life. Using simple props and costume changes the ensemble moves fluidly from scene to scene and character to character. Although billed as “avant-garde” there really is very little avant-garde about the piece – it is extremely accessible. The use of video projections, microphones for declaimed dialogue, cross-gender casting and the simple, clean design of the set are all familiar at this point, though they are artfully and elegantly executed.

I was surprised to find myself feeling sympathy for such a manipulative and ruthless heroine. But Ostermeier’s production draws you in to her world and Hobmeier’s mix of girlish enthusiasm and womanly sexuality makes her Maria captivating. Even at her most manipulative we can always see this romantic girl underneath – which makes her both fascinating and dangerous. And with the videos and slides projected onto the back wall, Ostermeier reveals what is going on in the rest of Germany at the time, and we realize that Maria is, in some ways, Germany. Powerful stuff.

As I said, I haven’t seen the Fassbinder film, nor had I seen Ostermeier’s previous engagements at BAM, so it is hard for me to make comparisons to either. Taken on its own then, I think The Marriage of Maria Braun is an excellent example of contemporary director-driven theater. Like Ivo van Hove, it is stripped and lean, focusing on the brutal emotional arc of the story and using minimal theatrics to convey enormous significance.

Have you seen it?? What did you think?

*****

Eliza Clark’s Edgewise, currently playing at Walkerspace in Tribeca, stands in stark contrast to the subtlety, complexity and simplicity of The Marriage of Maria Braun. Clark’s play is set in New Jersey in the not-too-distant future where war is a constant presence. Three hapless teenagers working in a burger joint are drawn into the war when a bloodied and mysterious stranger stumbles into their workplace. Is he one of the rebels? Is he a soldier? Is he dangerous? Who cares?

Written like a none-too-subtle Made-For-TV movie, Edgewise is, I suppose, a vaguely sinister exploration of the power dynamics in a small group of people and how fear can change us from prey to predator. Or something like that. Mostly it is just disappointingly bland and inconsequential.

Sometimes I get frustrated by the failings of experimental theater and I think to myself, “I wish I could just see a regular old play with, like, dialogue and characters and stuff”. And then I see a show like Edgewise and I’m reminded why I don’t go to more regular plays. The dialogue, the characters, the predictability, the familiarity, the attempts to gin up suspense and drama when there is inherently very little there. So unchallenging and unsatisfying.

To be honest I was really surprised because PlayCo. has such a great track record of presenting challenging new work and Edgewise was just so rote and familiar. You might want to just wait for it to come out on DVD.

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Video from TCG’s STAGE MATTERS:

Stage Matters from Theatre Communications Group on Vimeo.

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ANCHISES, a collaboration between choreographer Jonah Bokaer and the design firm Harrison Atelier, receives its U.S. premiere this week at the Abrons Arts Center, inspired by the story of Anchises – the father of Aeneas (the epic hero of Virgil’s Aeneid), who is carried out of the burning city of Troy on his son’s shoulders.

Jonah Bokaer is at once ubiquitous, driven and remarkably humble; he answered questions for Culturebot amidst preparations for ANCHISES, a tour to Miami for his recent work, Replica, and who knows how many other things.

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CB: Jonah, you’re one of the busiest, most successful, most multifaceted people I know.  You’re just shy of 30, you’ve got an amazing performance career, established two important creative institutions (Chez Bushwick and Center for Performance Research) and are deeply involved in new performance technologies.  How do you juggle all of this?

(Surely you flatter me! It’s not all that special.)

Currently, I work over 90 hours per week, and try to apply equal vigor to all of my cultural pursuits. Where I’m most satisfied is in technical rehearsal, and working with three key people who make my work possible: Aaron Copp, lighting designer; Julie Seitel, stage manager; and Samuel Stonefield, company manager. I feel at home with these people, and experience a focused, understanding bond that is non-verbal, and occurs through working intently on the same project. Being on the same page with people in collaboration is invaluable.

It’s also very valuable to work with mature performers, and in ANCHISES, the pleasure of being onstage with Valda Setterfield, Meg Harper, James McGinn, and Catherine Miller is highly rewarding.

CB: How do you take care of yourself, both in life and in art?  With so much going on, how do you spend the few hours that are yours?

Each day, I try to swim, which is where the most satisfying creative thinking occurs.  My family is also very important to me: I have 5 siblings, and multiple neices and nephews.  Collaborators tend to be some of the closest and most long-lasting friendships.

CB: It seems like you’re generally pretty collaborative in terms of your creative process.  Can you talk about how you identify the people you want to work with, and how they are involved?

All of my works begin with a visual collaborator, prior to any staging or movement research.  The visual design is used as a fundamental principal for the organization of choreography, which makes works which are synthesized, and fused, rather than operating independently.

Working with a visual designer or collaborator generally takes 12-18 months, and it an intensive and vigorous process. Normally the designer is present at nearly all rehearsals, which is a demanding way to work.

The design firm Harrison Atelier (with whom I am collaborating on ANCHISES) was co-founded by Seth Harrison and Ariane Lourie Harrison, whom I have known since 2005. Our collaboration has been highly involved, and developed over the course of 13 months.

CB: I’m interested in how things get from the grain of an idea to a full commissioned premiere.  Can you tell us what the life of this piece was for you?

In February, 2009 I met a talented and rare curator of dance named Eckhard Tiemann in Bangalore, India. Eckhard took an interest in my choreography, and later in 2009, set up a site-visit, lecture, performance and tour of Bournemouth, UK, under his artistic leadership as the Curator of Pavilion Dance.

Eckhard informed me of a community in Bournemouth with an audience question: most of the town was either elderly, or retired.

Over the course of a year, Eckhard designed a two-part commissioning program which involved a new media work called Double Feature, in response to the new construction site which would host Pavilion Dance upon the completion of its new facility, and a new choreography for stage, to premiere there.

In collaboration with Harrison Atelier, the production ANCHISES was formed. This was in large response to the problem of the aging body proposed in dance, which is a theme I have addressed in two past productions.

ANCHISES also experienced four production residencies, which I see as integral to making a full and mature work:

-rehearsal space in NYC at CPR, at $15 per hour
-lockout residency/design period in Hudson, NY
-theatrical residency for the set design at Abrons Arts Center
-10-day technical period in the UK, onsite in the theater

CB: I saw a recent performance of yours at Movement Research, and it was mentioned in your bio that your work is rarely seen in New York.  What do you attribute this to?

Currently, to premiere a new work, it takes 30 hours of technical rehearsals minimum.  I find that in NYC, facilities, theaters, staff, and presenting organizations generally expect very slim productions, and offer only 1-2 days of preparation. I’ve also found that I can no longer work in that way: to do a production correctly, I need 30 hours to prepare the work. This has to do with a method of working that uses the elements of technical theater in a full and integrated manner.

One aspect of the NYC performances which will be special, is that we are using LED (light emitting diode) lighting for certain aspects of the production.

CB: Anchises takes as its central idea that of aging, and the conflict between filial loyalty and the progress of the self.  How did you become interested in the story? What is your relationship to the classic myth?

My knowledge of Greek mythology stems mainly from the body of work Anne Carson has created over the past two decades.

I think there are gaps in the historical and mythological record: for example, Anchises dies an ambiguous death, and there are few details of his passing. Did he die at sea? During the fall of Troy? Abandoned/deposited in Sicily? It’s ambiguous, and in a sense, forgotten, which I find fascinating.  Aeneas, the son of Anchises, moved on to found the city of Rome after the fall of Troy, and effectively, this details the transition from antiquity to classicism.  Having personally developed and co-founded two buildings in NYC during an extremely challenging real estate climate – I find the problem particularly intriguing.

CB: What is your ideal for the future of performance?  What do you love in dance, opera, theater, music – and how do you see it developing?

Here is an excerpt from an essay I wrote called “On Vanishing”…

“Choreography is an act that vanishes. This is what drew me to the themes of Anchises – a character who vanishes, both from the historical record, and from public consciousness. Anchises has not received the forms of homage bestowed on other, younger archetypal figures: only remnants of him are recorded, including an ambiguous disappearance. This relates to choreography: we witness movements reproduced, but rarely the original event. As opposed to dancing, which is communally shared, or publicly viewed, the act of choreography is often private. It occurs, is transmitted, and disappears, through performance. This also relates to the form and figure of Anchises, and how he vanished.

As a choreographer working in 2010, it is treacherous to approach Greek subject matter. But language offers an important key, as the Greek language refers to choreography as “dance writing” from the words χορεία (circular dance) and γραφή (writing). It is still possible to design movements, without anxiety, in a specified form. This art form is on a continuum that is advanced by many participants, simultaneously, and over time: choreographers participate in this continuum, by moving the art-form in a variety of different directions

Choreographers, too, are vanishing. Within the past year, Pina Bausch, Merce Cunningham, Michael Jackson, and Kazuo Ohno all passed away, to varying degrees of public awareness. Their participation in new choreography has expired. This disappearance presents a problem, the implications of which are unexplored. And there is a parallel between overlooking the value of choreographers, and overlooking the value of the elderly.”

CB: You have worked extensively with some major giants in modern performance: Merce Cunningham and Robert Wilson.  Can you tell us some of your most fulfilling moments with each?  And, addressing ANCHISES, what we derive from the old is gleaned from their experience, knowledge, and past mistakes…what have you learned from your artistic elders?

ANCHISES is an accumulation of changes among five performers of mixed generations, whose ages span more than 50 years. The choreography refers to a multidimensional process of physical, psychological, and social aging among five bodies. Some dimensions expand over time, while others decline: reaction time, for example, might slow with age, but world wisdom might expand. Working with Merce Cunningham taught me that physical, mental, and technological growth can occur late in life. Similarly, Robert Wilson taught me that the body holds unstoppable forces of perception, defying limitation. And working with my father, recently, taught me that parents are often interdependent on their children.

It is difficult to summarize the experience of working with Merce Cunningham, as we worked together for 8 years, and traveled to 200+ cities in over 30 countries during that time. A fond memory is of being at the Blue Lagoon with him in Iceland, in the dead of winter, and watching him enjoy himself floating in the sulfur ponds – he seemed very joyful in that moment.

My working relationship with Robert Wilson is far closer and more collaborative than I experienced with Merce who, in my experience, did not collaborate closely with others. Working with Bob subsequent to the experience of dancing in the Cunningham Company was a relief: the director spoke, talked, joked, directed, and otherwise interacted with the creative team in meaningful ways. Bob and I continue to enjoy an ongoing collaboration, and are well-matched because we work formally, through abstraction, and with a large focus on the technical and design elements of a theatrical event.

Influences on my work include:

-Sarah Jane Bokaer, director
-Tsvi Bokaer, filmmaker
-Daniel Arsham, visual artist
-Anne Carson, writer and classicist
-Aaron Copp, lighting designer
-Anthony Goicolea, photographer
-Liubo Borissov, media designer
-Narciso Rodriguez, designer
and many others

Working with Merce Cunningham and Robert Wilson has likewise been very formative, intense, and profound in terms of the development of my own career, and my own work.

What I’ve learned from my artistic elders is that they, too, are still exploring, struggling, pushing, and searching for new directions.

CB: In an interview with Jonathan Cott, composer John Adams talks about some artists receiving creative energy from turning their backs on the past – he describes it like a primal scene with the father – where the act of artistic patricide is one of self-survival.  I thought this was particularly resonant with the themes of ANCHISES, and wonder how this might have meaning to you in relation to your own artistic past with Merce.  Do you ever feel in your creative process that you’re trying to eliminate that past?

The themes of ANCHISES involve saving, or salvaging, a parent during a time of crisis, and placing greater value on familial care than on material wealth. There is also an ethical and ecological component to the work: what happens to the aging body in our society?

I continue to move forward on creating original works without any anxiety over past influences.  I simply move on, with my own aesthetic signature.

ANCHISES
Jonah Bokaer and Harrison Atelier
Abrons Arts Center
November 17-21 | 7:30 pm
TICKETS: $20, $15 students/seniors

Popularity: 3% [?]

The Lar Lubovitch Dance Company will present a one-week season at the Baryshnikov Arts Center (BAC), November 18–21, 2010.  The program features Legend of 10; a revival of his acclaimed North Star; and a new production of the company’s most recent premiere, Coltrane’s Favorite Things.

I’m used to your work being in much larger spaces, though I know you were at DTW a couple years ago. What prompted a season in as intimate a space as BAC?

Actually, if you look at the history of the company, I’ve always worked in a variety of spaces. I enjoy how works look different in different spaces. It gives it all a different gestalt. I wanted to intimacy. I often venture all over the city looking for different spaces to perform. I have a history of creating theaters where none existed. DTW is one I originally turned into a theater.  It was originally a rehearsal studio for the American Theater Lab. I asked the owner, who happened to be Jerome Robbins, if he’d let me use it as a theater for a series of performances and brought in lighting and bleacher seating (that I rented) and that space eventuall turned into Dance Theater Workshop. Jeff Duncan, one of DTW’s founders, saw it as I converted it into a theater and he turned it into DTW. Then, a year later, I converted a scenery storage space in the East Village and that became the La Mama space. When our touring grew and performing in more proscenium spaces became financially necessary, that led to 13-14 years at City Center during the 70s and 80s. But, different venues have always been in my thinking.

You are known for keeping a close choreographic relationship to the music you work with.  For this season, you have Coltrane, Glass and Brahms. Were you thinking about the various musical selections as part of a single program?

I’ve always used a wide range of music in my programs. I’ve done an “all jazz” and an “all Mozart” program. Both times I’ve thought it was a terrible mistake. I know that today it is considered old fashioned to make dances to music, but it is what I’ve always done. I’ve always shown a range of music. The program includes a wide range of years from 1978 to Meadow from 2001, Coltrane from last year, and Legend of 10 to Brahms Piano Quintet, which is quite romantic – lush and poignant.  I do what I do because I’ve found my truth as an artist and it runs to the bone of my integrity and in my 43 year history it’s as truthful as I can be. My relationship to music is a personal expression. I listen to a lot of music. I’m always looking for music. I attend a lot of live music events. Sometimes I come to it by recommendation, but, more often, I am interested in a specific composer and go through their music. It’s much easier online now. I’m focusing on Brahms because I wanted to do a chamber piece and went through many other composers and then ended up back at Brahms. I had developed a work several years ago to Brahms. Balanchine had once claimed that it’s impossible to choreograph to him. Those kind of statements give me an itch that I have to respond to. So, I choreographed A Brahms Symphony in the 80s. This particular Brahms piece provides an emotional range and a constancy of sound that creates a very fluid aural environment and, choreographically, I’ve been creating works with a constancy of motion and this is in that vein. It doesn’t mean constant music; it’s more like a ribbon caught in a wind. The legend in Legend of 10 refers to the codes and symbols by which one reads a map and the company of 10 dancers. For this work, the dancers are cartographers who are mapping the music.

You mentioned your 43 years of working and being truthful to yourself as an artist. When did your truth begin presenting itself?

When I came into the dance world there were a few very extremely distinct voices. Graham, Limon, Balanchine, and then Cunningham.  The idea that an artist had to find their own voice was implanted early on. It’s difficult to say how one arrives at one’s own voice or how one distinguishes one’s truth. I think it comes from being honest about what stimulates your inner eye and shying away from the commentary by others who may not see clearly what it is you are doing and spend more time discussing what you could or should be doing. I don’t think one arrives at a singular place and stays.  It shifts; your truth shifts. After choreographing for some years, I found it illuminating to see the first work I’d ever made. I started at U. Iowa and, even coming to dance so late, I made a dance right away.  Someone made a film of it. I did it to audition for Julliard.  Once I started studying dance, I realized I had to go to New York, and when I found that I had to submit a dance, I made one up.  The filmmaker brought that back and I’d not seen it before.  I saw that I already had a voice and could appreciate that, years later it was still there – even after all the influences of the dance world.

You see a lot of work.  You’re always out seeing dance.  Where do you think dance is now after several decades?

That is a many-layered questioned.  Lifers like me – people who have been doing it for a long time – we have to put on blinders to make it through this path sometimes. I do see a lot of dance, many others don’t.  I think it has grown exponentially in creative directions. There are many more things called dance than there used to be. That is thrilling.  But, it’s also lost its civic direction because the amount of ideas have sent it in so many directions that many people don’t know what dance is. I think dance is in a holding pattern; I don’t think we are at a high point and it’s not quite  a plateau.  There’s a higher plane coming where it will have a larger resonance.  Right now, it feels as though so many people are reaching for difference for it’s own sake. Rather than a forward motion, we’re forgetting our history and re-inventing things. I do see a lot of work and see younger dancers and younger critics getting excited and think “I’ve been there and done that.”  There was a time when new was new and that’s very exciting. When someone does something new and original I want to be in a seat and seeing it. The focus on new takes away from accurate, specific, craft.  We lose our grip if all we focus on is “new-ness” rather than honing in to focus on our work and creative faculties. New will give birth to itself.

This burden of innovation often makes us forget quickly, which makes the NEA’s American Masterpieces: Dance program so interesting. It brings us older works that many of us haven’t ever seen, have no memory of. That’s how North Star came back into circulation, right?

Yes, most of us don’t want to spend time, energy, and money to bring old stuff back. But, there is a value in bringing things back. But, I probably wouldn’t have chosen to bring North Star back. Some one else asks. Some one else is identifying the demand.  But, it’s interesting to see these works in their new context. We try to keep every step the same so that it is the time in which we’re doing it and the dancers who are doing it that are different. These are very different times than late 70s. Counterculture was burgeoning and, it seemed, that thought was changing. We thought societally, that everything was changing.  And now, that is lost.  It’s in a very different light. It’s removed from how unusual the work was, when it was first done. “North Star” was one of the first concert dances to minimal music. Since then, who hasn’t choreographed to Glass or Reich. At the time that was new. Now, it has to be taken at face value. I can’t tell if that’s good or not.  But, we’re keeping it in the company repertory.  The AM grant pays part of the fee to presenters if this dance stays on the program.  So, it stays.  It helps with touring because it supports presenters and helps them get us there. That’s the business of dance.

Popularity: 3% [?]